FactualThe number of fathers at the head of single-parent families has increased from 300,000 in 2017 to 350,000 in 2020. A way of life which, as these solo fathers tell it, can become more chosen than endured.
For five years, Vincent Leuregans has been juggling daycare, school, the multiple activities of his three sons – a 10-year-old elder and 8-year-old twins. Five years of struggling between cleaning, laundry, meals, administrative procedures … Five years of combining his professional life and his life as a father, “Mom as I can”, he explains.
Since the death of his wife, this 42-year-old civil servant, who lives in Calais, has entered the world of single parenthood. Men represent 18% of parents raising their children alone. Their number increased from 300,000 in 2017 to 350,000 in 2020. “A constant increase in line with the increase in the number of separations”, notes Isabelle Robert-Bobée, one of the authors ofInsee study on families dated September. These figures are certainly below reality. “We are still many”, wondered one of these fathers on the phone, curious to know how the others are doing.
The divorced outnumber the widowers
Who are these others precisely? Separated, divorced, widowed … “The situations are varied, writes the child psychiatrist Patrice Huerre in Solo fathers, singular fathers? (with Christilla Pellé-Douël, Albin Michel, 2010). For fathers, this is a novelty. “ If Vincent Leuregans falls into the category of widowers (the main cause of single parenthood in the 1960s), marital breakdown is now most often at the origin of their unprecedented situation. Unprecedented, because these fathers ask to live with their children in an agreement most often established between the parents and ratified by the family court judge.
Mothers professionally overworked or deficient, sharing years of education or fighting for the residence … The starting point differs from one case to another. “Two boys, two mothers … I obtained custody of my sons after many appearances before the judge, it is a great relief”, says Jérôme (1), 46, a night watchman in the south of France. Pierre, 57, civil servant in France and abroad, asked for the residence of his two children, then aged 7 and 11, to ensure them a better education abroad and because, without it, “The link with them would have been weakened”.
For the past ten years, sociologists have been studying their cases. Agnes Martial,
anthropologist, researcher at the CNRS, sees them as “Lonely” fathers? (PUP, coll. “Penser le genre”, 2016), because they play the role of first parent, that of everyday life. Alexandra Piesen, PhD in sociology, associate researcher at the Center for Research on Social Links (Cerlis) at the University of Paris, chose for her thesis the term “solo parent”, less negatively connoted than single or isolated, in reference to the “soloists” who are on the front of the stage, but who have a chorus on which they can lean.
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